25 December, 2005

Happy holidays.Yes, plural, to those of you Grinches complaining of acknowledging others.It's late on Christmas morning/first night of Hanukkah.About a week until I leave for Syria, where one blogger reported the bells tolling in Damascus to coincide with midnight mass last night.

Flipping channels on the television, I landed on a Christmas pageant/mass on LBC, a Lebanese channel.What stopped me was that I noticed the young men playing the wise men looked to be mentally challenged. Then I noticed the rest of the cast.All the players, save Mary, were mentally or physically challenged. Even the baby Jesus.I found it quite moving and a nice reminder of some of the things what we should all keep in mind throughout the year.

I don't know, it was just the first thing I'd seen in a long time that I could possibly say moved me with the "holiday spirit."And to those other Grinches that say Muslims don't worship the same god as you (and you know who you are)...Watch a church service in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, or Israel and try not to fall over when you hear the priest refer to Allah. God in any language is still God.